There have been a few Brazilians playing in Korea on Syrian, Palestinian and East Timorese passports, will be interesting to see if anything comes of this.

Jonatas Belusso who was at E-Land this year and Gangwon last year came to Korea on a Syrian passport. Daegu's Eder is Brazilian but has a Palestinian passport I think and they definitely have three other Brazilians so he'll have to have used his Palestinian one.

Could all be above board with these chaps of course in which case all well and good, but if they were improperly registered then the resultant points deductions (surely?) would make things interesting. Gyeongnam could yet still be coming up, their links to Serbian warlords has certainly kept them safe here...

The United Arab Emirates’ Arabian Gulf League is named in two investigations into passport fraud, The Sports Integrity Initiative has learned. The separate but overlapping investigations revolve around the use of false, stolen and/or improperly obtained passports.

One investigation relates to widespread abuse of Asian football’s ‘3+1’ rule, under which one of four ‘foreign player’ spots in a team’s roster is reserved for a player from another Asian nation. It is believed a number of players from Brazil and Chile have been unduly given Asian passports as a way of cheating this rule.

The UAE Football Association was last year asked to investigate one club’s claim that a rival player – who had only just transferred from Brazil – was playing having used the passport of a elderly Uzbekistani woman. The complaint was withdrawn shortly after being lodged. At the time, at least five South Americans were playing in the league using Asian passports, taking up around a third of the league’s Asian player spots.

The SII is aware of a number of other South Americans playing across the continent on Middle Eastern passports, including several from Syria and Palestine. It is believed only a small number of them are legitimate.

The other investigation – which is also being carried out by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) – involves East Timor’s use of Brazilian players. This is a separate investigation to the one launched by FIFA last year, after the Timorese fielded seven Brazilian-born players in a World Cup qualifier against Palestine.

The launch of FIFA’s investigation – which, almost a year later, is still yet to be concluded – saw the Timorese stop using their tranche of Brazilian players for the rest of their World Cup qualification campaign. The practice resumed in June, when East Timor and Malaysia met in two Asian Cup qualifiers, prompting the AFC to look into the matter.

Around two dozen Brazilian footballers – all of them male – are believed to have received Timorese passports since former FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter visited the country in early 2011. Many of the recently naturalised players have never been selected for Timor’s national team, but do play in Asian leagues, including the UAE’s. A number of Brazilian-Timorese players advertise ‘Asian passport’ on their Twitter and YouTube accounts.

Belusso to E-Land is a pretty interesting one as they made a big deal of getting him to fill the Asian slot and then didn't actually sign a third foreigner anyway. So they gained no advantage from it. I doubt the guy has ever been to Syria or could find it on a map, personally.

Will be interesting to see who the "guilty" parties are. Were the clubs:

encouraging players to get these passports?

completely unaware that all this was going on, or

aware but not actively encouraging players to get dodgy passports?

SteveW wrote:Belusso to E-Land is a pretty interesting one as they made a big deal of getting him to fill the Asian slot and then didn't actually sign a third foreigner anyway. So they gained no advantage from it.

Although true, I don't see that as a useful defense, if that's what it eventually comes down to. They could have filled that empty spot.

MipoFanatic wrote:Will be interesting to see who the "guilty" parties are. Were the clubs:

encouraging players to get these passports?

completely unaware that all this was going on, or

aware but not actively encouraging players to get dodgy passports?

SteveW wrote:Belusso to E-Land is a pretty interesting one as they made a big deal of getting him to fill the Asian slot and then didn't actually sign a third foreigner anyway. So they gained no advantage from it.

Although true, I don't see that as a useful defense, if that's what it eventually comes down to. They could have filled that empty spot.

Don't know if it's a defence so much as just illustrative of how not on the ball the team was/is being run - especially if they turn out to have broken rules.

Wanderley scored Al Nasr's opener in their 3-0 win over Qatar's El Jaish, but the Asian Football Confederation named him as an ineligible player and effectively reversed the result ahead of this week's second leg.

"The committee held, on the basis of information received from various state authorities and after analysing the case file, that the Indonesian passport submitted to register Wanderley was false," it added.

Wanderley, 27, joined Al Nasr in July and scored the opener in last month's win over El Jaish, but he was provisionally suspended as doubts emerged over his nationality.

Teams are allowed to field three foreigners in the competition, plus one more if the player has Asian nationality.

The AFC said investigations were continuing into who was responsible for the "forgery or falsification" of Wanderley's passport.

Al Nasr, who have never reached the Champions League semis before, host El Jaish for the return leg of their quarter-final in Dubai on Wednesday.

November 14 – A bizarre case of deliberate deception has reached its conclusion with Brazil-born forward Santos Monteiro Wanderley receiving a backdated three-month ban and his United Arab Emirates club Al Nasr thrown out of the Asian Champions League for two years after both were found guilty of faking documents so he could play in the tournament.

Both parties admitted using a forged or falsified document to flout quota rules, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) said in a statement.

Wanderley had signed for Al Nasr in the summer from Sharjah and had been registered with the AFC as being qualified as an Asian player, significant in that each club in the Asian Champions League is allowed to field three foreign players and one non-national from another Asian country.

But after scoring twice on his debut in Al-Nasr’s 3-0 victory over El Jaish in the AFC Champions League quarter-final first-leg, the Dubai-based club were forced to forfeit the game when Indonesian state authorities announced that Wanderley’s Indonesian passport was a “forged or falsified” document.

Wanderley has now been fined $10,000 and suspended for three months. Al Nasr has been fined $50,000, ordered to return $340,000 in prize money from this year’s league, and given a suspended two-year ban from the tournament.

The disciplinary panel of the AFC concluded the club “bore the majority of the fault for the violation, having deliberately obtained an Indonesian passport for the purpose of circumventing the 3+1 rule, and that its employees were not truthful in their collaboration with the AFC.”

The committee found Wanderley at fault for agreeing to be registered as Indonesian but not being an Indonesian national. His suspension was backdated to September 2.

Al Nasr have not qualified for next year’s AFC Champions League but they are now barred from the 2018 competition, meaning their earliest return will be 2019.

The AFC said it was investigating other suspected cases of players using fake passports while FIFA has an ongoing investigation into possible ineligible players.